Keith is Captain of the Siege, whom all praise for his punctual firmness of progress; Balbi as before, is Engineer, against whom goes the criticism, Keith's first of all, that he "opened his first parallel 800 yards too far off,"-- which much increased the labor, and the expenditure of useless gunpowder, shot having no effect at such a distance.

There were various criticisms: some real, as this; some imaginary, as that Friedrich grudged gunpowder, the fact being that he had it not, except after carriage from Neisse, say a hundred and twenty miles off,--Troppau, his last Silesian Town, or safe place (his for the moment), is eighty miles;--and was obliged to waste none of it.
Friedrich is not thought to shine in the sieging line as he does in the fighting; which has some truth in it, though not very much.

When Friedrich laid himself to engineering, I observe, he did it well: see Neisse, Graudenz, Magdeburg.

His Balbi went wrong with the parallels, on this occasion; many things went wrong: but the truly grievous thing was his distance from Silesia and the supplies.

A hundred and twenty miles of hill-carriage, eighty of them disputable, for every shot of ammunition and for every loaf of bread; this was hard to stand:--and perhaps no War-apparatus but a Prussian, with a Friedrich for sole chief-manager, could have stood it so long.